Some beds used in hospital and care facilities, such as care facilities for the aged and or disabled, are adjustable in both height and contour. Such beds comprise a patient support that supports a mattress, upon which the patient lies. The height level of the patient support is adjustable between accepted limits by drive system controllable by the patient or a healthcare worker. The patient support is divided into a plurality of sections, including a head section, a torso section and a leg section. The various sections are selectively movable with respect to each other by one or more controllable drive mechanisms to facilitate angular adjustability that enables the patient supported thereon to assume a variety of positions so as to improve patient comfort and/or to facilitate treatment.
In hospitals and nursing homes providing care for the elderly and/or individuals suffering from dementia and the like, conventional hospital beds have considerable drawbacks. Often, such individuals have limited movement and limited control over their movement, and can be prone to periods of confusion either due to their condition, or influenced by medication they may be taking. In such instances, it is not uncommon for individuals to fall from their beds and suffer injuries, even where their conventional hospital beds are placed in their lowered positions.
Whilst rails and the like have been proposed to assist in retaining the individual on the bed, the use of rails and other such enclosures has been known to cause injury, and in sometimes even death, when the individual has become entangled in the rails.
In order to address such problems, it has been proposed to provide high/low beds for use with individuals prone to falling from their beds. Such high/low beds provide greater vertical adjustability than conventional hospital beds as the height of the bed can be lowered to a level that is approaching the level of the floor. With such beds, should the individual fall from the bed to the floor, he is unlikely to sustain significant injury. These beds do not need protective rails around the bed, and hence reduce the possibility of strangulation and limb breakage should the individual become entangled in such rails.
As high/low beds require a large degree of vertical movement to move the bed between a position that is approaching the floor and a conventional elevated bed position, conventional high/low beds have required a dedicated height adjustment mechanism located underneath the bed. Such a mechanism is controllable to raise and/or lower the bed as desired. In this regard, the bed may be lowered at night to reduce the chance of injury should the individual fall out of the bed, and may be raised during awake periods.
A problem with such high/low beds having the height adjusting mechanism located underneath the bed, is that there is minimal clearance underneath the bed to accommodate a patient-lifting device. In this regard, due to various health and safety regulations, most hospital and nursing homes provide a dedicated patient lifting device in the event that an individual falls from a bed or requires lifting from the bed to perform everyday functions. Conventional patient lifting devices employ a cradle-type system to be located around the patient and a hoist to elevate the patient onto the bed. As the patient-lifting device requires at least partial accommodation under the bed during use, the lack of clearance under a conventional high/low bed prevents use of such a device. Where such high/low beds provide a clearance to accommodate a patient-lifting device, the height of the bed in its lowest position is still high enough to provide significant risk of injury to an individual falling therefrom.
To overcome this deficiency in high/low beds, beds commonly referred to as floor beds have been proposed. Such floor beds are also capable of being raised/lowered between an elevated position and a position adjacent the floor, and employ screw mechanisms at the head and foot of the bed to elevate/lower the patient support. In this regard, most floor beds comprise columns located at the head and foot of the bed, which accommodate the screw mechanisms for raising and lowering the patient support. Such conventional floor beds are typically visually distinctive and are readily identified as a hospital bed, lacking the aesthetics of a conventional or “home-style” bed. The columns at the head and foot of the bed allow little scope to improve the aesthetics.
The above references to and descriptions of prior proposals or products are not intended to be, and are not to be construed as, statements or admissions of common general knowledge in the art.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a high/low bed that can locate a patient close to the floor so as to reduce the likelihood of injury in the event of the patient falling from the bed.
A preferred object is to provide a bed that can be aesthetically pleasing and which can be relatively simply adapted for use with conventional patient lifting devices and other such equipment, as required.